OIL COMPANIES.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4011, 4 August 1931, Page 6

OIL COMPANIES.

OWED £1,000,000 BY FARMERS. POSITION IN WEST AUSTRALIA. PERTH, July 11. That the amount owing to the or! companies in West Australia by country clients, almost exclusively wheat growers, was estimated at £1,000,000, was the statement made to the Farmers’ Debts Commission to-day by Mr R. Allingham, manager in West Australia for the Shell company. The chairman (Mr A. H. Dickson) said the commission primarily wished to know what were the differential rates in the price of oil for cash, and on terms to the farmer.

Mr Allingham replied that at the present time his company was trading almost entirely on a cash basis. The nominal terms were:—They allowed the farmer llid per gallon for cash within 30 days, and after the expiry of a further CO days, there was a charge of 6 per cent, on overdue accounts. That, he might say, was a more nominal quotation than the actual one. The company was really trading for cash now. Mr Dickson; It means the farmer gets three months free of interest? Witness: Yes. Asked if his firm has done very much in the way of after-harvest terms for oil and petrol, witness said it had for some years past. It commenced operation on that basis in 1927. Early in that year it appeared to him that power farming was going to have a big future, and it would be necessary to give terms to assist farmers to carry or After harvest terms were brought into force, not only in West Australia, but throughout the Commonwealth, and they had been in operation ever since. For the first two or three years the scheme had been successful, but last year it had not.

When asked if he could give the approximate outstanding amount among petrol companies, witness said he could not give the figures, but his company estimated that country storekeepers and fanners owed the oil companies £1,000,000. His estimate excluded Perth. The squatting industry did not owe the companies much, nor had any large debt been contracted in the southwest. The bulk of the amount was owing by wheat growers. Answering questions, witness said any suggestion that the oil companies should give further credit to farmers would have to be very seriously considered. Quite frankly, they felt that in the past they had been at a material disadvantage compared with certain other creditors. He supposed they had only themselves to thank for it, bur they had been giving unsecured credit in the past to a considerable extent, and they thought that one of the last to be considered had been the oil companies. The companies had no statutory rights like the superphosphate and cornsack firms.

Witness pointed out that while the companies had advanced fuel to enable the farmers to take off their crops, they had not received one penny front the proceeds.